A coalition of animal-rights and environmental activists protested on Thursday in Barcelona’s Placa de Sant Jaume to denounce what they say has been decades of favoritism toward the animal hunting lobby by the Catalan regional government and calling on the Catalan Parlament to include regulation of hunting activity in new legislation “that is appropriate to today’s reality and society, with a high conservationist component”.

United under the slogan “Truth About Hunting” (La Veritat de la Cacera), the coalition has brought together national and regional environmental and animal-rights groups, including Ecologistas en Acción, Anima Naturalis, FAADA, Futur Animal, Galgos 112, Libera! and others, to denounce the undue influence of a tiny minority of Catalans that have virtually blocked regulation of hunting in Catalonia to the detriment of the wildlife population and the region’s ecology.

According to the coalition, there are just 30,000 hunters in Catalonia, representing just 0.6 percent of the population of the region, yet the hunting lobby has managed to successfully pressure Catalan authorities to allow the hunting of wildlife across 90 percent of the region’s territory. The coalition charges that for decades, the Catalan government has intentionally favored the hunting lobby to the extent that the Catalan Hunting Council includes only one member of conservationist organizations and no representatives of animal protection organizations.

The coalition says that consideration of a new law on hunting in Catalonia has been introduced into the Catalan regional Parlament with input only from pro-hunting lobbyists and organizations, while “completely ignoring” the opinions of environmental and animal protection groups. According to the La Veritat de la Cacera coalition, the new law needs to include strict regulation of hunting, taking into account the protection of wildlife and the fragility of natural ecosystems across the Catalan region.